As a lot of you may know and for those who don’t lane has a six year old grandson who is named jasper. He is in the first grade. He likes lane to stop on her way to work in the morning to get him out of bed. They make a game out of him getting up. Lane thinks she probably enjoys it more than he does cause she gets to see him and spend a little time with him that otherwise she wouldn’t get to. He enjoys it but he knows that when lane gets him up he then has to go to school a short time later.

He loves school but like all kids gets tired of getting up early every day. Last Friday morning when lane went by his great grandmothers house where he lives she told lane that she would probably need lane’s help soon. Lane asked what was wrong cause she was crying. She told lane that her older sister had had a stroke and that she was paralyzed. The doctors had sent her home because they felt there was nothing more that they could do for her. They said she might live two weeks. Sad lane says she knows but his grandmother wanted lane to take care of jasper when the time comes so he won’t have to be involved in the funeral process.

His great grandmother and her sisters are all very close. So close in fact that her late husband had two children with her sister, who just had the stroke, before he started dating her. They never married and the sister and great grandmother stayed close and saw each other often. So when this sister got sick the whole family had rallied around to help and comfort one another.

Lane once asked her former mother in law, jaspers great grandmother, how things like that happened; One man having children with two different sisters. She said that back then some fifty or more years ago that the only people available to have relationships with was usually kinfolk and people did what they had to do. Lane was shocked as she had never heard tell of such things before. Lane was brought up to believe that family was family the first time and you didn’t mess around with your family.

When the great grandmother told lane that she and her husband were first cousins it blew lane’s mind. She asked if there were any bad feelings toward the sister because of this and she said no; why should she? Talk about next of kin. Too close for lane.